Saturday, June 16, 2018

When Amazon announced they were retiring their Music Storage Subscriptions, I decided to download all of my music.

This was troublesome in a number of ways. The metadata was pretty well screwed up, so there would be songs without an artist name or album name. So I ended up downloading just one album at a time, so I would know which album was which. Yeah, total PITA.

But once that was done, I found I had a number of songs with names like 'dd-tt- Title of the Song' where dd is the disc number and tt is the track number. And thankfully so, since some of these tracks didn't have the disc or track number in the metadata.

So what I've done is made this little AppleScript (called Fix_iTunes_names.scpt) that will go through all of the songs and rename them from 'dd-tt- Title of the Song' to just 'Title of the Song' - but ONLY IF dd matches the disc number and tt matches the track number. So totally safe!

And then I added another Applescript (called Fix_itunes_names_and_numbers.scpt) for more adventurous folks that will also rename songs from 'dd-tt- Title of the Song' to just 'Title of the Song' and ALSO set the disc number and tarck number to dd and tt - but ONLY IF either number was blank to start with.

You don't have to buy me a beer or anything, but if you want to, feel free - and thanks! http://paypal.me/dldnh

Friday, December 15, 2017

​The idea that an ISP can collect money from a content provider because a consumer requested content is like saying Safeway should be able to charge Kellog's for the Pop-Tarts I want to eat.

Just wait until Disney starts telling Time Warner to pony up for all the Toy Story they've been carrying. The real problem is that consumers have little or no choice of ISP. Each ISP has a practical monopoly in the markets where they operate.

In order for a free market to be a solution to some problem, there has to be a choice. I may choose from a variety of content providers, but I don't get to choose my cable company.

If a consumer doesn't like the way their ISP is regulating content, they should be able to choose a different ISP. But they can't. Maybe it's time we start regulating ISP's like the monopolies they really are.

Monday, January 23, 2017

I love my Macs, but sometimes through no real fault of their own, they can be a bit of a pain in the butt.

Take the Option Key. Very helpful if you're using the Finder.

Ever try using the Option Key when you're connected remotely to your Mac Desktop using VNC? It just doesn't work. VNC settings, nothing.

But I have discovered a solution. Simply turn on Sticky Keys and use the Keyboard Viewer. Now you can use your mouse to press the Option Key - not ideal, but in a pinch, it's better than nothing!

Here are the step-by-step instructions for setting this up:

1. Open up the Preferences

2. Choose Accessibility

3. Turn on Sticky Keys

4. Go back to Preferences and choose Keyboard

5. Turn on "Shoe keyboard and emoji viewers in menu bar"

6. Open up the Keyboard Viewer

7. Now whenever you need to hold down the Option Key, tap it in the Keyboard Viewer

8. If you didn't have Sticky Keys turned on, you'd have to keep it held down in the viewer, but you can just tap it the once. Tapping it again puts it into some other state. Tapping it a third time turns it off. So whenever I want Option, I double click it in the viewer. Then I do whatever it was that needed the Option Key in the first place. And then I tap it again to turn it off.